Phnom Penh

Phnom Pehn is the Capital of Cambodia and a pretty sad place to visit. I say that but really I only spent one heavy tourist day there, seeing heavy things. Most of us are aware of the terrible things that went on in Cambodia up until recently; namely, war dictatorship, genocide and more war. In Phnom Pehn the two main tourist sights are the killing fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

The killing fields are just that... fields were killing went on. It is a rather small are filled with shallow holes that were mass graves for the people held at Tuol Sleng S21 prison (S21 just means security station 21). Pretty much everyone who went to that prison was executed. Under the Pol Pot regime education, knowledge of a foreign language, race and critical thinking were all grounds for execution. Of the fifteen thousand or so people who went through the prison, something like seventeen survived... Those are not good odds. There is a monument on the killing fields. It is a tower stacked inside with over eight thousand human skulls. A heavy sight to see...The Tuol Sleng Genocide museum was just as heavy, or maybe even worse than the killing fields. It was a high school before Pol Pot took power, but when schools were abolished under the regime it was turned into a brutal prison. All types of people, teachers, government officials, intellectuals, etc were interrogated and tortured here. There are some terrible pictures hanging on the walls in the somberly quiet rooms.

But Phnom Penh is not all gloom and doom. There is a palace too, which was quite nice. I don't think I appreciated it very much at the time as I had just come from two places just mentioned and my mind was racing with questions of: How are human being capable of such terrible things? How did this come to happen in Cambodia? etc. But the palace is quite beautiful and it was nice to be able to reflect on the terrible feelings I as having in a such a serene and majestic place.



I stayed in a backpacker ghetto on a "lake," (well stagnant polluted swamp is more appropriate a description) right in the middle of Phnom Penh. It had nice sunsets and little kids were constantly harrassing people to go for rides in their boats. I was not too sad to leave Phnom Penh, which is too bad in a way because I was not able to get beyond the 'what happened here' to the 'what is happening here.'